Our objective was to determine the predictive value of various biochemical and histological traits for tenderness of the longissimus muscle. Data collected from 27 crossbred cattle included longissimus pH, temperature, sarcomere length, total and percentage of soluble collagen, muscle-fiber type and area, cathepsin B and B + L activities, calcium-dependent protease (CDP)-I, -II and inhibitor ac...

OBJECTIVE Although clinical hypothyroidism (HO) is associated with insulin resistance, there is no information on insulin action in subclinical hypothyroidism (SHO). DESIGN AND METHODS To investigate this, we assessed the sensitivity of glucose metabolism to insulin both in vivo (by an oral glucose tolerance test) and in vitro (by measuring insulin-stimulated rates of glucose transport in iso...

The clinical importance of preexisting HLA antibodies at the time of transplantation, identified by contemporary techniques, is not well understood. We conducted an observational study analyzing the association between preexisting donor-specific HLA antibodies (HLA-DSA) and incidence of acute antibody-mediated rejection (AMR) and survival of patients and grafts among 402 consecutive deceased-do...

INTRODUCTION The nature of the participation of neutrophils in the post-cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) inflammatory response is not very clear. The aim of our study was to investigate alterations in neutrophil phagocytic activity and adhesion molecule expression on these cells in children during and after CPB. MATERIAL/METHODS Twenty-one children aged 6-33 months with congenital heart disease, ...

INTRODUCTION Health programs implemented by microfinance institutions (MFIs) aim to benefit the poor, but whether these services reach the poorest remains uncertain. This study intended to investigate the socioeconomic distribution of patients in hospitals operated by microfinance institutions (i.e. MFI hospitals) in Bangladesh and compare the differences with public hospitals to determine if t...

By surface modification of MFI microcrystals with sec-butanol and pre-coating the substrate with a temporary water layer, a convenient process is developed to directly assemble anisotropic MFI microcrystals into highly b-oriented monolayers on various substrates with different surface conditions.

Catalytic fast pyrolysis of waste rice husk was carried out using pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry [Py-GC/MS]. Meso-MFI zeolite [Meso-MFI] was used as the catalyst. In addition, a 0.5-wt.% platinum [Pt] was ion-exchanged into Meso-MFI to examine the effect of Pt addition. Using a catalytic upgrading method, the activities of the catalysts were evaluated in terms of product composi...

The maximized Fisher information (MFI) criterion has been the mainstream of the item selection algorithm in many computerized adaptive test (CAT) programs because of its effectiveness and simplicity. There are still several issues with the MFI criterion, however, that need to be resolved in the field, specifically regarding estimation accuracy at the beginning of CAT administration and item poo...